[applause] dr. Rice is going to be interviewed for us by one of the best interviewers i know who has his own show on bloomberg, our National Book festival cochair and very generous supporter, mr. David reubenstein. Please welcome both of them. And thanks and enjoy. Well, thank you very much for coming. Thank you very much for having me here and welcome to everybody. Thank you for being here. Its a great event. Great eventment. Host so, hard to believe but you have now been out of government for about nine years, just before we get into your new book on democracy, which i highly recommend, and well talk about in a few moments, tell us what you have been doing since you left government other than writing three bestselling book. Youre tetching at stanford. Guest ive gone back to my real risk had that digression into washington, but ive actually been at stanford sis i was 25. I start thread as an assistant professor and returned to stanford. My appointment is in the Business School but i teach both Business School students and undergraduates. Teach a course in American Foreign policy. Ive been able to do a little bit of work in the private sector, little consulting, and im spending a lot more time practicing the piano than i did when i was in the government. Thats really a great love and im trying to improve my golf handicap. Thats a lot harder than playing the piano. Host speakingspeaking of yof handicap, youre one of the first two women to be elected to the Augusta National golf club sunny was stunned. In fact when. Guest i was stunned. In fact when a good friend who was a member of augusta who told me i was dumb found. He said you are going to say yessing are right . I said, yes, am but i was completely taken by surprise. Host just tell me, what is your handicap . I wont tell anybody. Guest its not really a state secret. So, i am for those who are golfers, theres something called an index and you take that index and you go to different courses and depending on the difficultity of course you establish your handicap so my index is 11. 6, which means that own most course im a 13 or 14 handicap. Host wow, okay. Ever play with president george w. Bush sunny have played with president george w. Bush on a number of occasion. He plays speed golf, plays really fast. Youve almost have to run to your golf ball could keep up with him but we have played together. Host music, you did train to be a Classical Music pianist, and i have seen you perform with yoyo ma, among others. Do you do a lot hoff those concerts anymore. Guest i play at least one concert a year. Was fortune to plaintiff we yoyo ma at his Music Festival at the send center for which you were such a great leader, david. But at least once a year i play a concert with a professional quartet from boston university, and we do a benefit for a charity that we started called classics for kids. Puts Musical Instruments in the kid. Believe like everybody that we need stem, science and technology and mathematics but im a great believe we need the arts. Kids need exposure to the arts. Host i want to focus on your book, but you were born and grew up in birmingham. Guest yes. Host a segue degree grate segregated south under jim you. How long didded take you to realize you werenting treated the statement sunny grew up in birmingham the most segregatessed big city in the country at the time. A police where the police commissioner, bull connor, was known for his brew brutality towards blacks and didnt take long to know that your parents were a little embarrassed because they couldnt take you to restaurant or a movie theater. They were never people who let us this Little Community agree up in, which was mostly School Teachers mitchell parents were educators. They never let us feel we were victims itch they always said when you consider yourself a victim you have lost control. So dont ever consider yourself a victim. They also said youre going to have to be twice as good. Now, they didnt say that as a matter of debate. They said it as a matter of fact because education was supposed to be your armor against prejudice. But i remember the very first time that it it really came home to me, went to see santa claus and you take a little kid and a santa claus puts the kid on the knee and says what will youve hear for christmas . This santa claus was taking the little white kids and putting them on his knee and holding the black kidded out their talk to them. My father, who was a former football player, my dad was 63, 240, he said to my mother, angelene narks if he does that to condoleezza im going to pull all that stuff off of him and expose him as the cracker that he is, he said. Host what happened . Guest so, theres this little girl and youre five and its santa claus daddy. Santa claus, daddy. Santa claus must have read my fathers body language because when it came to me he put me on his knee and he said, little girl, what you like for christmas . That was the first time i thought this is really terrible and over santa claus. Host one other thing that might have been unusual you had an unusual first name. Where did that name come from . Guest condoleezza is my mothers attempt to in italian means with sweetness. And her name was angelina, and i have an uncle, alto, an ant, genoa, but i think that she wanted an italian musical term and the first thought about andante but a that meant walking slowly. Allegro went foot. That wasnt good. And she came up with host your parents moved out of birmingham, moved to denver. Guest yes. Host you ultimately went to school at the university of denver. Guest yes. Host you graduate it identify beta kappa. Guest necessary. Host then went to notre dame. Guest thats right. Host but you didnt get involved in football cheering youve were a graduate student. Guest i loved football. Are you kidding . Of course i went to notre dame football gamessed a a graduate student. Everybody does. Host you went back to the university of denver and got a ph. D. Guest yes. Host then recruited to stanford. Guest thats correct. Host youre specialty was soviet affair snooze yes. Host what detroit pick that sunny was a failed music major. Started in college at a piano major. I studied piano from the age of three mitchell gram taught people know piano. I went to the as spend Music Festival school and i met 12yearolds i thought i would end up as a playing piano bar some place or playing i wandered back, no major, and i took a class in International Politics and caught by a man named joseph corber, Madeline Albrights father and i knew i wanted to study things soviet, eastern european, diplomacy, and that kicked me into International Politics as a major and ultimately as a degree. Host Madeline Albright told the story that her father once said that his favorite student was you. Guest yes. Host she was surprised that you had been his student ship had not known that. Guest thats right. Host so, you starteddor academic career at stanford and then ultimately you got involved in the george h. W. Bush administration in the National Security staff. Guest yes. Its really important story because theres this notion that we sometimes have issue got on my own. Nobody gets there on their own. Theres always somebody who is advocating for you, working for you, and for me, Brent Scowcroft who had been National Security adviser to gerald ford, came out to stanford to give a talk and i was the second year professor at stanford and he got to know me and said i want to get to know you better. I like your work. I was getting anyone for work on the soviet military. So he started taking me to conferences like the as as spend Strategy Group and he mentored me into the field. Therapies another lesson in that. We also say you have to have role models and mentors who look like you. Its great if you do but if id been waiting for a black female soviet specialist role model id still be waiting, and instead my role models and my mentors were white men. They were old white men. Those were the people who dominated my field and so i always say to my students now, your mentors just have to be people who believe in you and who see things in you that you dont necessarily see in yourself. Host so he helped you get a job on the bush 41 guest when george w. Bush was elected, he asked front be his National Security adviser and brent called me and said, this fellow, this 1988, remember. He said this fellow gorbachev is doing some interesting things in the soviet union if the president s going to need somebody to help him sort it out. Want to be the white house soviet specialist . And as a result i got be the white house solvee spiey, at the end of the the cold war. Host do you speech russian . Sunny do. Host so, after that administration, was over, you went back to stanford. Guest i did. Host then when george w. Bush was running for president , how did you get involved with that . Guest i went back to stanford. I was provost. , the chief operating officer of the university and a very happy academic but george h. W. Bush called me who said my son is governor of texas, thinking about running for president and id like you to talk to him about Foreign Policy. I spent a couple of days with him and after a little while he asked me to organize his Foreign Policy in the campaign, and thats how i got involved with george w. Bush. Host so were you surprised he asked you to be in the National Security adviser at the beginning of that administration. Guest by the time we get to his election, i figured i would probably go into the administration and National Security adviser, identity been to the National SecurityCouncil Staff before, seemed natural. Host how many women serveds a National Security advise before you. Guest none. [applause] host okay. So, lets talk about this book. Democracy. Why did you feel compelled to write a book about democracy . Guest i think in many ways i wanted to write this book for a long time because it is in some ways an expression of my own life. I am a Firm Believer that there is no other system that accords the kind of dignity that human beings crave than to be able to be free from the secret police at night to be able to sigh what you think, worship as you please and for those who govern you to have your consent. When agree up in segregated birmingham where my parents relatives were half citizens but still believed in the american democracy dish relate one story in the book, i was with my uncle alto and be picked me up from school and it what election day and i was sixish, and i knew in my own sixyearold way that this man, George Wallace, was not good for black people, and so there were a long lines of people going in to vote, and it was segregated. Said if all these people vote then that George Wallace man said cant win. He said, oh, no, were a minority so George Wallace is going to win anyway. I said to him, so why do they bother . And he said because they know that one day that vote will matter. And i never forgot that. And i thought, as i wrote this become of the extraordinary story of the United States of america, this constitution that was given to america by its founders, these highminded words about equality, and yet a country born with the birth defect of slavery, but how this same constitution that had once counted in the compromise, my ancestors were threefifths of man and i would take the oath of offers as the 6 of secretary of state, under the portrait of benjamin franklin, sworn be any a jewish woman ruth bader ginsburg, and that for me is the story of democracy. Host now, we point out in the book that you are africanamerican but actually 40 of your blood line is white. Guest yes. 40 is european. Host and ten per is asia. Guest something other, yes. Some other. Host in birmingham, the young girls that were killed in the bombing, were they people that you knew . Guest absolutely. Birmingham black community, professionally the professional class wases small, and denice mcnair. One though four girls killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church becoming in september of of 63 had been any fathers kindergarten. Id gone to considered with her. Theres a picture of my fewer give michigan are, her kindergarten diploma. Her father was the photographer at everybodys weddings and birthday parties and so, yes, my adi me a collin had been in my uncles home room, and i remember him saying that day, that monday when they went back to school he just looked at her empty chair and just cried. Host when that happened, did you family say we should move . Guest no. No. I do remember the first time seeing real fear in my parents eyes about what they could do to protect me. But, no, we stayed there. Birmingham began to change. Again, the story of democracy. That same constitution would be used by the naacp and Thurgood Marshall and others starting back i describe it in the book with the marlowe report from 1937, and they would sit there on friday morning and they would decide what cases they would take to try and break down segregation and inequality, and and that would eventually end up in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights act of 1965, and the first time that my parents and i could go to a restaurant, two days after the sift rights act passed my father says, lets go out to dinner. We went to a hotel for dinner and the people sort of looking up from their food and then maybe realizing, now it was okay, we had dinner. Host so in your book you point out that we have had a birth defect slavery, but when slavery was ended in 1865, we went to jim crow laws. So how do you as an africanamerican woman rationalize what our country did after the civil rights amendments occurred in the constitution . We still went for 100 years of discrimination. How do you say that democracy is such a wonderful system and our country is so great when you had to live through that . Guest because there is no perfect system that human beings have ever created. Ever. And yet because of the institutions at that time we are bequeathed, the constitution, the courts, independent judiciary, slowly but surely the rights of the descendent of lives would be won throughs the very institutions when Martin Luther king and others took on the struggle, dr. Dorothy height, the only real woman mook the great civil rights leaders, they were asking american e america to be something else. They were saying, america be what you say you arement now, youre in a much stronger position when have on the instituteness place and you can appeal to those institutions. So in any system, the bring offering rights to people is a difficult and sticky and hard process, and our has been extremely hard but i look how far we have come, still with a long way to go, and i think we have actually done better than i think of anymore in the world has done it. Host so, youre a very accomplished person, very famous do you feel any discrimination anywhere in the world, anything that you do, youre discriminated against. Guest i always say if by the time youre a senior professor at stanford or secretary of state, somebody treat iowa bad badly because of your race, your gender, its your fault, not thursday. No. I feel very strongly that i am able to achieve what i want to achieve, and i try to tell my students to feel the same way. If you goes back to what my parents said. Under you consider yourself a victim, then somebody else has control of your life. Now, we all know that there are grave inequalities in our society, and we know that our great nationalness doesnt matter where you came from, matters where youre going. You can come from humble circumstances, you can do great things. It isnt true for all off our people. So, our goal, our job, is a citizens of this democracy, has to be to use these institutions to demand of these institutions that they deliver on that promise, not shun them. Because theyre still the best option for getting there. Host now, did your parents live to see your Great Success as a professional . Guest i lost my mother very young. My mother was only 61. I was 30 when she died but she did get to see me as a professor at stanford. The christmas before she died, gave her my very first book which was not a New York Times best seller. It was called the czech army and soviet union mitch desert addition. Neither of those countries exist anymore. And so i gave her the book so she saw me become a professor mitchell father knew that id become National Security adviser and died shortly with left for washington. Host you were an only child. Guest yes. Host so am i. Guest thats why im a sports fanatic because that was my fathers passion and a music fanatic because that was my mothers passion. When youre an only child you have to satisfy both. Host lets talk about democracy in the rest of the world. The United States has a democracy, not perfect. You talk about the soviet union and russia. Obviously a subject you know about. You point out that democracy broke out in roche i russia after the bolshevik resolution and after gorbachev lost pair. Why did democracy disappear from russia . Guest well, one thing i seek to do in the book is dismiss one of the explanations you sometimes get about russia. That the russians dont have the right dna for democracy. I just dont believe that there are any people on the face of the earth who arent capable of democracy. David, you know that we have used cultural arguments so the germans were once supposed to be too martial. The asia were too confuse shoes. The africans were to tribal but you have ghana, bat about wanna. L